Thomas County cat. [volume] (Colby, Kan.) 1885-1891, 1887-05-05

will find the fishwomen bowling and
dancing ana throwing flowers on little
Jacopo."
We proceeded to the Halle des Pois-
sons.
The sight that met my eyes was
something it would be very difficult to
forget. There stood the strange child
with the pure white hair in the center
of a group of excited men and women.
whose bare arms showed that they had
just left their stalls. They were throw
ing flowers at him and praising him in
extravagant terms. He, all the time,
took no notice of them, but kept gaz-
ing before him. and every few minutes
exclaiming in a kind of ecstacy:
"Claire! ma Clalre!'' His dress was
singularly neat, but of colorless white,
while his long hair fell over his Shout
ders unbranded by cap of any kind.
THAT boy" said my friend, ''has a
wonderful story in connection with his
short life, and these poor people look
upon his presence among them as a
good omen. At this moment they are
blessing him for that burst of sunshine
which, a few moments ago, helped to
make our lazy life endurable up there
at the Hotel Christol.''
In the drawing-room of our hotel
my friend told me the story of poor
Jacopo: Four years previous to the
events herein narrated, Jacopo was
left an orphan, together with his only
sister Claire. Both belonged to the
Haute Vile that frowns down upon us
up there as if in its pride of age it
scorned this plebeian Bas Vile. They
became so attached to each other that
they were inseparable, and the Eeigh-
bors loved them for their beauty, their
innocence and their affection. The
children wandered hand in hand for
hours through the quiet old town. At
times they were found playing among
the sand accumulated in front of the
Porte Dune. with its grim and heavy
port utilised gate; at Others they
played in front of the queer little house
where Godfrey de Bouillon, the first
CRUSADER King of Jeruselum. thou
sand years ago was born; but above all
they loved to stroll through the cathe-
dral, gazing with awe at every thing
the great gold candles, the splendid
affairs, the valuable pictures of Christ
and the Mother of Sorrows. the blue
spangled arched roof with the yellow
stars, and the gruesome offerings made
by patients who have been cured of
maladies by persistent appeals to some
favorite saint. They even spent
hours among the crypts, where endless
tombs and few slots in the damp,
bare walls made every thing look SO
weird and systematically solemn that,
except in the daytime, not even the
bravest of the residents of the Haute
Vile would venture among them.
These children, however, were too in
nocent to know fear. And so they
went along together hand in hand
through the grass-grown old streets of
Godfrey's birthplace.
But one day Claire died. She was a
blonde and Jacopo was dark. At first
the child Jacopo could not understand |
what had become of his beloved sister:
He saw her little body strewn with
fresh-cut flowers and the chaplet of |
flowers that surrounded |
her marble brow where the yellow silk |
CIR -nI L., ,,I
her face and cried: "Claire. ma
Claire, why do you not speak to me?
1t is only me, little brother Jacopor'
And when no answer came from the lit
tie dead body, his paroxysms of grief
became so violent that the good-heart-
ed neighbors said he would surely kill |
himself, and carried him away.
One day the now utterly forlorn child
was walking, half sobbing, through a
narrow old street, where queer gabled |
houses cast fantastic shadows along the |
almost forsaken thoroughfare, and no
sound disturbed the silence but the
praise-singing of some pious sister in
one of the converts that abound in the |
Haute Vile, when vicious young man.
known as lie Savage" approached |
Jacopo and laughed and jested at him
for his weeping for mere girl.
"You ought to be a girl yourself. If
you want to find Claire, why do you
not 50 down to the crypt of the Cathe-
lral at midnight, and then you will |
find your sister?'
The child looked up with his large
dark eyes flashing with the light of ex-
pectation.
land shall 1 truly find ma chere
Claire there?' Jaccpo asked.
"Of course you will, you little fool"
said the savage. as he ran off down one
Of the ghostly streets of old Bologne.
On that same night the fat old sac
ristan of the Cathedral was aroused
from his slumbers by hearing shrill
cries issuing from somewhere in the
great edifice. The hour was midnight
Father Hildebrand crossed himself,
himself to the protection